A celebratory, Christian music that moved out of church hymns into a more active and impassioned direction thanks to the influence of African Americans, gospel is a relatively newer hybrid of religious music. Though the building blocks of gospel are as old as praise music itself, the term “gospel” didn't appear until later part of the nineteenth century. Arguably the most fecund period of gospel took place in the '40s and '50s, when gospel music became the expression of not just spirituality but the struggles and hopes of the civil rights movement.